


dear Forgiveness, i saved a plate for you. quit milling around the yard and come inside.

by hasitsclaws



Series: we're inconsolable. [14]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Adult Content, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mayan Mythology - Freeform, Mentions of incest, Nine Lords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 03:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1729685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hasitsclaws/pseuds/hasitsclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The underworld, or Xibalba as Santanico insists upon calling it, is disgusting.</p><p>part fourteen of the 'we're inconsolable' drabble series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear Forgiveness, i saved a plate for you. quit milling around the yard and come inside.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second to last work of the series and I'm crying. I'm going to miss it a lot and hate writing the end.  
> There are also mentions of many other characters in this work, but they're disguises for the Lords and not the real thing, just to give a heads up. I tried to incorporate the mythology as accurately as possible while still maintaining the feel of the story and the characters. In addition to the Nine Lords residing in Xibalba, there are also a bunch of Gods of Death (so says Wikipedia, heh), so it kind of makes sense of to me that everyone would run into a few of those too during the trip, if not all of them by the end of the series when they make it to the council of the Gods once reaching the end of Xibalba. If anything gets confusing, let me know and I'll clarify the best I can.

* * *

 

 

There in the darkness, wandering tombs they thought they'd left behind forever, he holds her hand tight in his own and questions if forgiveness is a luxury they can't afford anymore, not when there's nothing but death waiting around the corner for them.

They have to go into the underworld through a river.

It's in the very bottom of the Titty Twister, like some sinking, swirling void that makes Seth's hands shake when he looks at it. Fire's his biggest natural fear, and water that leads literally leads to Hell is second in line.

"Do we really have to go through there?" he asks, glances at Richie out of the corner of his eye and the youngest Gecko just smiles.

"Cowabunga, brother," Richie says, and dives in right after Santanico and her following army.

Seth grimaces, looks over at Kate who's staring at the portal in front of her with a frown. "I didn't really want to get my hair wet today," she's telling Tara almost like this is all a joke, holding the dog's leash who almost looks _eager_ to go for a swim. "Oh well, guess we can't all get what we ask for."

Seth remembers Richie describing how he first saw Kate in loose moments before Richie got shot, before he wasn't _alive_ anymore.

"I saw her bleeding out into the pool and I...I wanted to save her," Richie said.

"Are you sure you don't just have a hard-on for an underage girl?" Seth asked, though Richie's words of Kate Fuller being in pain stuck with him for years to come.

"No," Richie frowned. "She's meant to be here, Seth. We all are."

The underworld, or Xibalba as Santanico insists upon calling it, is disgusting.

They land in the middle of its entrance, masses of vampires and hunters, only to be left staring out at three rivers straight out of a Tarantino movie. "Scorpions, blood and pus," Tico says, face looking green as he takes in the different smells of the rot around him. "This place is nothing if not gruesome."

The sky looks like a mix between dusk and dawn, flipping back and forth by the second, eternally orange like writhing flames, red like beating hearts.

"There's a boat over there," a hunter named Rebecca says, her partners nodding next to her as she points out towards the river of blood where a small canoe is bobbing in the water.

"No Lethe or Charon, damn," says another hunter with a foreign accent, her partner smiling next to her.

Santanico speaks for the first time since entering the tombs then, Richie standing unwaveringly at her side. "No need for a boat or a ferryman, anyways," she says, full lips turning up in a smile as she steps towards the river of blood and makes a small swaying motion with her hands.

Low and behold, just like some fucking biblical figure, maybe Moses (Seth will have to remember to get clarity on exactly how the story goes from Kate if they even live through this), the red sea parts.

"Follow me," says Santanico, and Richie looks over at Seth and shrugs, taking his first step through Hell.

Seth wonders if maybe his brother's Jewish now, or something.

"Tanner's notes say a lot about tricks and obstacles once we get down there," Freddie whispered to them all back in the tombs, darkness settling in around them.

Seth was so busy focusing on Kate, on the way her eyes and feet seemed to waver as they walked, that he wasn't listening. He wondered if she was thinking about killing her father down here, killing her brother, too. Seth could still remember the turns of this place, the stone Tetris pieces that fit together and opened doors.

He hated that about himself, and he also hated the fact he didn't pay any attention to Freddie and was not even slightly prepared for what came next.

There's birds everywhere.

 _Crows_ , to be more exact. Seth still remembers that time Richie tried to save one of the damned birds, how their father broke its neck right in front of him. Right now, Seth thinks his old man was kind of wise for doing that.

The crows have jeweled teeth and wings, pick off Santanico's vampire army like it's nothing, their bodies falling but not turning to dust as they would above. Seth throws himself in front of Kate as Richie does with his vampire queen, and the hunters are all trying to shoot the animals down but it's not working, not well enough.

"Take out their teeth!" Kate screams, grabs a bird out of the air and pulls the crystals from its mouth. "That's how the twins killed their father!"

In the end, when the birds' bodies lay glittering among their molars on the ground, nearly all of Santanico's army is gone.

Ten hunters are dead, too.

Seth is surprised the fucking dog outlived them, and feels kind of bad he doesn't even know all of their names. But he can see part of Rufus' group, one of the girls he didn't talk to on the phone, Chen, dead in the melee. Her girlfriend, Sasha, is sobbing and trying to bring her back.

Santanico touches the hunter's arm and she bristles, but is too overcome with grief to push the vampire away from her. "We all know loss here," Santanico says, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears for all of her dead followers. "No one ever escaped slavery easily."

Sasha says something back to the demigoddess in Russian, and Seth doesn't have to be fluent in the language to know it means, " _Fuck you_."

There was this time in Belize that Kate taught Seth how to cook.

They made shepherd's pie together, and Seth was reminded of when Richie and him had tried the same thing when they were still children and their father was still alive and Dad had beat Seth within an inch of his life for the mess.

 

They came here to kill the Lords of the Night, and now, quite suddenly, they're killing Gods, too.

A little ways after the birds, Xic and Patan show up, two Gods who kill people by making them cough up blood on roads.

The entire group going to kill the Lords is on a road.

Originally, there were three paths to choose from, all shouting different things and trying to make them go the wrong way. Seth had looked at Richie, and Richie had looked at Seth. It'd been a long time since Seth'd felt so close to his brother when they chose which road to take-- maybe it's a good thing that despite Richie being dead and Seth being alive, they still work well together.

Except when every person in the hunting party is now coughing up blood and neither of them know what to do.

"We want sacrifice," says Xic, millions of eyes shining in his head.

"I'll give you one," says Santanico, and even though she only has twenty vampires left since the birds killed the rest, she and Richie decapitate them all so the Gods can bathe in their blood.

It's in the middle of this that Richie takes out his knife and stabs Patan through the spine. The God howls, a deafening sort of sound before his many limbs disappear into dust, just like vampires do anywhere but the underworld.

Xic seems shocked that his brother is dead, millions of eyes gone wide just as Kate steps up-- Seth goes to pull her back, but only manages to drag her wedding ring off her finger.

Richie tosses her his knife.

"You think you can kill _me_?" Xic screams at her. "You're just a pathetic, tiny, _human_ girl and I am a _God_!"

"You aren't _my_ God," Kate says, and then stabs Xic in the heart, watches blankly as his massive form splatters blood on her, covers her in thick red coats like so long ago, that first day she and Seth and Richie met and Kate fought her way through the darkness.

Seth laughs as the God's form splinters into pieces and fades to ash, because he thinks it's irony of the worst kind; he slips Kate's wedding ring back on her finger.

Seth still remembers when he the ring out.

It was in a pawn shop, of course. A small, golden band and nothing else. With Vanessa he had gotten diamonds, but he knew Kate liked things that were a bit more simple.

He gave it to her the day before the wedding, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and tackled him to the floor, laughing. "It looks like my momma's," she said, slipping it onto her finger since he was too busy being sprawled under her to do it himself. "And it matches her cross."

"So that's where you got this from," Seth said, fingering the charm around Kate's neck that he'd never bothered to ask about before; maybe he should have, considering she never takes it off, not even after she started losing her faith.

Sometimes he figured it was the only tie to God that Kate had left, but then he realized it was actually the last piece of her family she'd ever have again, and that's why it's so important to her.

"Yeah," Kate smiled, pulled on the fabric of Seth's sweat jacket. "Did you get this from Richie?"

"I did," he answered, owed her that much honesty. "He left it in the car before we changed into the suits on the last heist, and I put it in the bag with the bonds afterwards in case he, uh, wanted it later, y'know? Guess I forgot to take it out before I grabbed the money and ran."

"It still smells like him," Kate whispered, sinking her fingers (especially the one wearing her wedding ring) into the jacket's sleeves so she could hug Seth closer to her.

"I know," Seth said, rubbing a hand down her back. "I've been wearing it for the longest time."

Santanico said that all the Lords would be at a palace, waiting for them.

Santanico was wrong.

"I see you've killed my cousins," says Tlaloc, a God of rain and one of the Nine; he's flooding the plane they're on in buckets and he looks like a mix between Rollo and Luego, those hunters that double-crossed Seth and Kate before she killed them a long time ago. A hunter no one knows the name of steps up to ask if it's really true, if his cousins are really there, and the God rips out his insides. "You won't get away with that in my presence," Tlaloc says, the rain washing blood from his hands.

"Listen, buddy," Seth says, too tired of all of this to pay any kind of respect or play it even marginally safe. Richie steps up behind him and Seth reaches his hand back, knife slipping into his grasp. "I'm getting tired of all your spieling. Just... _be cool_ , would you?"

He throws the knife as hard as he can and suddenly the rain stops as Tlaloc no longer looks human, mist-like form turning into some big, soppy puddle, which melts into dust just like that.

They aren't so lucky with Xiuhtecuhtli.

The God comes in the form of that damned Ranger that Richie put a faulty shot in over three years ago.

" _Earl_ ," Freddie says as he catches sight of his old mentor, doesn't realize the man's a fake.

"You promised me you'd kill them," says the God, only he has the dead Texas Ranger's voice. "What'd I tell you, Fredrico? Follow them to the Gates of Hell if you had to. Now you're here-- pay up."

Freddie, like his body is on autopilot, turns to aim his gun at Seth's head. " _No_!" Kate screams, and just as Freddie fires, Adam jumps in the way.

Richie takes the open opportunity to stab the fake Earl in the chest, right where he shot him last time, right where Richie got shot himself, breaking the spell around Freddie, the Ranger putting down his gun and rushing to Adam's side as Kate holds the Sargent on the ground, the dog licking the man's face and whining.

"What's it feel like-- dying?" Richie asks as the fake Earl's body turns back into a God's and then to ash.

Adam smiles. "It _sucks_ , but at least there's good company."

"I never thought I could kill another living person for the longest time," Kate said to Seth when she finally told him what had happened to her dad; they'd been together for a week and she woke up sobbing, his arms instantly around her because he still felt like this was all his fault, like he never should have let her come with him even though she insisted. "I didn't think I had it in me."

"We all do, somewhere," Seth said.

"Do you think you could die for someone else?" Kate asked, sniffling into his t-shirt.

"Yes," he answered without question, an image of Richie's face flashing through his mind. "Absolutely."

They end up in a cornfield after Adam's taken his last breath, Freddie dragging his feet as they walk.

"It isn't your fault," Kate and Tara and another hunter named Isla are saying to the Ranger in soft tones. "You didn't know."

"Adam's still dead," Freddie murmurs, glances at Dusty's downtrodden face and cringes. "And that's on me."

Seth swallows, wants to say that it's on him, too. He doesn't know why the Sargent tried to save him. Then again, he never understood why Sargent Frost had done the same thing back at the Titty Twister so long ago.

 _They were both good, honorable soldiers_ , whispers a voice at Seth's side, and his eyes bug out of his head as he looks down and realizes the dog is talking to him. Again. _Be proud they died with their boots on._

" _Christ_ ," Seth hisses, and when a pair of Ukrainian hunters ask him what's wrong in broken English, Seth shakes his head, opens his mouth to say he's going nuts when suddenly the corn starts growing higher around them and turns into a labyrinth.

"A maze of maize, how befitting, Centeotl!" Santanico calls out to the sky above. "Show yourself, coward!"

" _I see you still don't know your place,_ " says a voice from the stalks of corn themselves. " _When will you learn it, girl?_ "

"I will be ever amazed by how sexist these pricks are," says a hunter called Sunny, teeth set in a sneer.

" _Silence,_ " the corn hisses. " _You have all sealed your fate. We gave you eternal life and beauty, Santanico, and you still bring_ outsiders _to rally against us._ "

"Hey, homes, I'm Mexican born!" Tico shouts out, cupping his hands around his mouth to project volume across the entire field.

"Same!" Miguel agrees, turns to the side and cuts an ear of corn in half with a machete. " _Viva la revolution_!"

"That's French, Miguel," says another hunter with a very strong French accent himself, his partner nodding her dark head beside him, the same one who said something about a river called Lethe what feels like a million years ago.

"Whatever," Miguel says. "I'm still going to fucking kill this prick."

Richie grins over at the hunter almost predatorily. "Don't bother," he says. "I've got it covered."

He takes off into the fields, and Seth's first instinct, even after all this time, is to automatically run after his brother.

Somewhere along the way, he walks into a different reality.

In it, the Gecko brothers grow up right.

Their old man isn't a drunk and a thug, their mom doesn't give up on them, they only ever hug each other as far as touch goes. Even though Richie's still a little crazy, they're still kind of poor and get into sticky situations growing up, they're loved and happy and _together_ , and their dad dies from a heart attack when Seth's twenty-three, normal causes and not lighter fluid flames.

Richie cries at the funeral.

Seth gets hid G.E.D., even an associate's in business and snags an office job to help pay for Richie's master's degree in engineering. Their mom remarries some car salesman guy from Tampa and moves there, is real happy and calls her sons at least once a week, talks about how she makes a killing at church bingo on Tuesday nights.

Seth meets Vanessa at a graduation party for Richie; they get married two months later and they aren't good together, but they're happy, even after the divorce.

"You always chose your brother," Vanessa says once the papers are final, smiling at Seth sadly. "Just once, I wish you would've chosen me."

At thirty-three Richie decides to go back to school for his doctorate's, and takes out a loan from the bank and they can actually afford its payoffs.

Seth keeps their small apartment near Texas State while Richie gets a dorm for the weekdays so they don't have to share the only car in commute. He takes the bus home on weekends and the most touch they share is still just a hug or two, Seth touching his forehead to Richie's and saying, "It's _okay_ ," after his brother has a particularly bad therapy session.

Seth can't help feeling there's something missing in those innocent expressions of comfort, shakes it right off as soon as he thinks the thought.

Two weeks into the semester, Richie comes home smiling ear to ear. "I met someone," Richie says, scarfing down his dinner.

"Really?" Seth asks, because his brother's had no more than a handful of dates, only two fucks under his belt and Seth was starting to worry the guy was going to be alone forever.

"Yeah," Richie grins. "Her name's Kate. She's a freshman-- trying to get her degree in teaching. She's from around, a preacher's daughter."

"Oh man," Seth says, slapping his brother on the back. "Have fun with that."

Richie seems to though, brings Kate home to meet him two months later and Seth feels something twist in his stomach when he looks at her. She's young, of course, what he expected since she's a freshman and all. But she's also beautiful, in that forbidden sort of way, like there's a light inside of her no one could snuff out even if they tried. Richie's got his arm around Kate's waist, the brunette blushing as she shakes Seth's hand and ignores the spark the same as Seth.

Kate's a sweet kid, and he figured that too, being a preacher's daughter and all. She helps him cook dinner and laughs when he burns the roast after staring at her for too long. Seth watches the way Richie touches her all throughout the meal, kisses her every open chance he gets and Seth's happy for his brother, the fact that human touch comes so easily to him with this girl unlike all the rest.

When they retire for the evening, Richie goes as far as to give Kate his bed, sleeps on the couch. Seth joins his brother with a bottle of scotch warming his belly, Richie liquor-loose as he looks over and says, "She's everything I've ever dreamed of. I feel _free_ with her, like I can do anything."

"Good for you, brother," Seth says, ignores the jealousy flaring in his chest-- he doesn't know if he's jealous of Richie or _Kate_ , and that makes him uncomfortable.

"We haven't had sex yet," Richie slurs, downing another glass of booze. "I like that though. She hasn't done it before and I don't wanna rush her. Waiting makes it nice, anyways."

"I bet so," Seth says, instant relief all welled inside of him.

They leave on Sunday and Kate gives Seth a kiss on the cheek, making his skin burn.

When Richie comes home two weeks later he tells Seth that they've finally had sex, that Kate says his name when he makes her come. It has Seth antsy, jerking himself off in the shower later thinking about Kate's little smile and his brother's callused hands; he vomits afterwards and still doesn't feel any better from the thoughts.

Kate shows up with Richie the next weekend, and he can hear them fucking through the walls, Richie murmuring _good girl, my good, dirty girl_ as he's obviously going down on her by the slurping sound of his mouth against her cunt and Kate's hitching breath in response.

Seth gets out of bed to sit on the couch and watch T.V. so he can't hear them anymore, surprised when Kate comes out a while later in one of Richie's button-downs, asks for a glass of whiskey and coughs as she drinks it.

"Where's Richie?" Seth asks, can't hide the jealous hint in his tone.

Kate giggles obliviously. "Passed out in bed," she says. "I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, us being here...?"

"Naw," Seth lies.

Kate nods, takes another drink and grimaces. "I think my dad would kill me if he knew what was happening."

"Has Richie met him?" Seth asks, staring at the television and not hearing what anyone on it is saying.

"Yeah," Kate says. "About a month ago. He didn't approve too much, since Richie's a lot older, and all."

"But you like that," Seth says, liquor making it so he can't filter word to mouth.

Kate shrugs. "I guess so. I never imagined I'd fall in love at college, though. I had a boyfriend in high school, but after my mom died I kind of got...uninterested. I didn't think I'd like anyone for a while, after that. But then Richie and I ran into each other in the cafeteria and we just... _clicked_ , I guess."

"You love him?" Seth asks, feels the sudden urge to cry if her answer is _yes_.

"I don't know," Kate says, makes Seth sigh in relief. "Maybe."

"He's a messed up kid," Seth says, can't help himself.

"I know," Kate says, which shocks him, 'cause usually Richie doesn't let anyone know he's a little crazy, refuses to. "He's a lost soul, but I think he can find himself again."

"Through God?" Seth asks.

Kate shakes her head. "I gave up on God a while ago. _He_ can't fix you-- you have to do that yourself."

"Amen, sister," Seth says in answer, and when the word _sister_ stays on his tongue after, he doesn't again, even when Kate gets up and goes back to bed, leaving her glass lip-stained on the table.

The next morning Seth lets his hand linger on Kate's waist too long as he passes her to get a frying pan for pancakes from the cupboard, and he knows Richie notices because that night Kate's practically screaming when they fuck.

And Seth's an idiot and totally, completely insane and disgusting, but when he notices the door is slit open to Richie's room while trying to cross into his own, he can't help but look. Through the gap he can see that Richie has Kate up against his desk, her legs wrapped around his hips as he thrusts into her _hard_ , biting at her neck so violently dark bruises stay behind in his wake.

Kate's eyes are closed, but Richie's are open, move over to catch Seth's gaze in the doorway and he _smiles_ as Kate's nails press into his naked back, blood dripping down in small rivulets over Richie's skin.

Seth shuts the door and jerks off in the shower thinking of that smile, of Kate's hoarse shouts before he goes to sleep.

The next day the two of them leave, and Seth tries not to think about it too much when Richie doesn't come home for the weekend. Or the next.

He does on the third weekend though, Kate right in tow. Seth acts like nothing happened, but he can't ignore the possessive way Richie holds Kate against him as they watch a movie after dinner, the way there's blossomed hickies all over Kate's soft, pale skin.

That night Kate comes out to join Seth on the couch again, and for the first time he notices how tired she looks, how bloodshot her eyes are. "I don't know if I can do it anymore," she confesses to him, just the neon light from the street coming in through the curtains letting Seth see the desperation in her face. "He loves me too much."

"Richie has a way of doing that," Seth says, leaning into her even though he shouldn't. "Geckos have a hard time of letting go."

Kate blinks, fall of tears so sudden it makes Seth's chest ache. "I don't want to hurt him."

"Me neither, princess," Seth says, and when he says the nickname, something in Kate's expression shifts.

She's across his lap, her mouth on his in seconds. He groans at the feel of it, digs his hands into her thighs and lets her pull him out of his pajama bottoms, lets her fuck herself onto his cock and thrusts up into her clumsily, limbs loose with need and guilt as he finishes inside of her, Kate muttering his name into his mouth as she comes on a sob.

The lights to the living room flip on suddenly, Richie standing there at the edge of the hall, eyes hard behind his glasses. "Kate," he says.

"Richie," Kate murmurs, fresh tears spilling out. "Richie-- I didn't-- I'm--"

"Come back to bed, Kate," Richie says, and Kate looks at Seth one last, fleeting time before doing what she's told.

They leave the next morning before Seth's even up, and Richie doesn't bother to come home again, not even for Christmas break.

Seth's at the office the Monday after New Years when suddenly Kate shows up with a carrying dish full of shepherd's pie, and he takes her and the lunch to go sit at a picnic table in the park across the street, some kind of botched taco stand advertising fresh horchata, whatever that is, while the crust of the pie flakes all buttery and warm in Seth's mouth as he hums appreciatively.

"I'm worried about Richie," Kate says to him after a moment, messing with a small cross around her neck nervously.

"You two still together?" Seth asks, jealousy eating at his insides.

Kate nods. "He's getting bad, Seth. He talks to himself a lot, and I think that he's hurting himself. Sometimes when we're--" she blushes-- " _together_ , I see these marks on him, all jagged and irritated. I'm scared."

"He won't talk to me," Seth says, shaking his head. "His therapist called to say he stopped going to sessions."

"We have to do something," Kate says, eyes red with the beginning of tears. "This is all my fault, and I can't let it keep going on like this."

"It's my fault, too, princess," Seth says, watches shame and longing rise into her expression and sighs. "I've wanted you since I saw you, didn't care if you were Richie's first."

Kate swallows, looks off into the distance as she says, "That's because you want Richie, too."

Seth doesn't answer her, picks up his cellphone when it rings a couple minutes later and hears his brother's rushed voice on the other line. "Richie, slow down, what's going on?" he asks.

"I did something bad," Richie says.

Seth and Kate go to the motel Richie said he's at. It's called the Dew Drop Inn, and they find Richie by the pool, smoking a cigarette. When he shows them the mutilated body of a woman in one of the rooms, her guts all over and eyes cut out, Kate starts sobbing in horror.

"Room keeping called the cops," Richie says, just as Seth hears the sirens.

A Texas Ranger named Freddie Gonzalez aims a gun at Richie's chest and tells him not to move when he gets to the room, the man's hands shaking but his gaze determined.

"Richie, please do what he says," Kate begs.

Richie shakes his head, pulls a gun out of the back waistband of his shorts, one of their dad's from when he'd go to the shooting range on the weekends before he died, showed Seth how to take the revolver apart and put it back together faster and faster with each round while Richie built model planes quietly at the kitchen table, their mom humming as she cooked dinner.

"You chose each other over me," Richie says. "So I'm going to set you free."

"Richie, no," Seth says. "Please, I can _fix_ this."

"I'm sorry, Seth. Maybe I'll come find you in another life," Richie says, and when Seth hears a gunshot, his world shatters and Kate falls to floor where Richie's bleeding to death as Seth looks at the Ranger and his smoking gun while his brother dies in the arms of a beautiful woman.

 

"Seth!"

He blinks, looks up at the maze of corn around him, searching for Kate as he hears her voice call his name again from somewhere in the distance.

"That was easier than I thought," Richie says from next to him, and Seth glances back to his brother, to  that bank teller Richie killed so long ago lying dead once at his feet, the body quickly melting into that of a God and then simply turning to dust while the corn starts to shrivel and die, too. Richie claps Seth on his back. "You okay, brother? You finally starting to _see_?"

"Love is watching someone die," Kate had said just a few days ago, her eyes shining in the inconsolable light of noon. "I don't want to watch you die, Seth."

Seth knows he can't watch her or Richie die-- he _can't_.

And he doesn't want to choose between them, not this time.

The next Lord they meet is Tecpatl-- he looks like Seth and Richie's father.

He sets the world on fire and Seth freezes in place as he watches five hunters burn to death.

"Stupid, no-good bastards," fake Dad is yelling, both Seth and Richie still not able to move. "Fucking Irish _twins_ , ha! Should've beaten the both of you out of your whore mother's womb when I had the chance!"

Seth blinks, and before he knows it Santanico's there, tears fake Dad's head off and Kate helps the demigoddess by stabbing the body until it fades into the flames, and the world goes still.

_I guess I'm just the guy who killed dad._

Seth looks at Richie and his brother's just sort of smiling at Kate as she stands, covered in gristle and soot, like the girl's his fucking _protege_ or something-- it makes Seth want to vomit.

Seth didn't tell Kate about the fire for a very long time.

They'd been together over a year, already had more than enough doses of tragedy when he whispered one more to her in the night.

"I'm so sorry, Seth," Kate said, holding him close.

"Yeah," Seth laughed, even though he was kind of crying. "Me too."

Chalchiuhticue, whose beauty rivals Santanico's by untold greatness, is next-- she takes on the form of Chen until Sasha and three others are dead, Marie and Rufus looking on in horror as they lose another teammate and three friends who try to help.

"Here, _I'm_ the queen," the Goddess says, bodies lying at her feet, and Seth laughs at memories of the past as Santanico holds the Goddess down and Richie drives his knife into her throat.

Another God of Death tries to stop them along the road, rises from the dust and stabs an aging hunter named Marla in the back.

Marla retaliates by blowing the God's head off with a shotgun, and Seth drives Richie's knife through the body's ribs.

"Wanted to retire with a bang," Marla laughs where Miguel's holding her hand on the ground. "And what a bang it was."

The first time Seth shot a gun, the kick fire singed his hand.

"Idiot," his father hissed, slapping him upside the head. "You're supposed to expect that."

He walked away and Richie glared at their father's retreating back before taking Seth's hand in his and smoothing his fingers over the wound, looking up at Seth with a reassuring smile.

Seth did the same to Kate the first time she shot a gun and popped her trigger-finger out of place. "It happens," he told her. "You didn't know any better."

Jacob and Scott Fuller''s bodies sub in for Tepeyollotl and Tlazoteotl.

"Katie-Cakes," the fake Jacob says, and Kate begins to sob, shaking her head violently.

"Daddy?" Kate asks, and Richie steps up to punch the fake Jacob in the face, has him lying on the ground, faking hurt.

"Stay away from her!" Richie says, goes to attack the fake Scott but Kate begs him not to, tries to stop him but Seth holds her back, feels her struggling, so caught up in the spell of it all she's entirely forgotten that her father and brother are dead, that she had to kill them both herself.

It's then they ask Kate why she did this to them, why she abandoned her faith. Kate holds her hands over her ears and drops to her knees in the dirt, taking Seth with her as she tries to block them out. "God won't forgive you, Kate," the fake Jacob says.

Kate looks up sharply at that, red-rimmed eyes focusing in. 

"I told him God doesn't live in the pages of some book, that he isn't cruel," she'd explained to Seth one time when relaying Jacob Fuller's final words, his eternal love for his daughter showing through until the end. "I told him he could go be happy with Momma."

"You're not my father!" Kate screams now, remembers everything with sharp clarity. "You're not Scott!"

"No, Katie, they aren't," Tara says, stepping forwards and thrusting her hand out to Richie. He gives her the knife, knows that Kate won't stop her from being the one to kill these false images of her family-- Kate trusts Tara more than anyone in the world, even the men she loves.

Florence and, surprisingly enough, Santanico run up to grab at the fake Scott, hold him in place as Tara slices open his throat, body turning back into a disgusting, bubbling God before wavering into dust the same as the real Scott's body had done so long ago.

When the fake Jacob tries to retaliate by grabbing at Tara with sudden claws, Isla Johnson takes the hit. Tara kills the God turned preacher and Kate sobs louder.

"I always liked you," Isla says as she dies, smiling up at Tara and patting her cheek with a bloody hand; Tara wears the mark with loving pride. "Take care of Freddie for me."

They walk on into what has turned to a bone white afternoon consumed with death.

"She's just misunderstood," Kate whispered to Seth one afternoon as he was resting up after getting out of that damned warehouse, the hospital. "I mean, I don't condone what Santanico does, or anything, but it makes sense."

"How so?" Seth asked, entirely confused as to why Kate was giving sympathy for the woman she hated most in the world.

"I talked to her, while I was there," Kate said. "She's been trapped for so long, Seth. It was a cruel thing, what they did to her. She was just an innocent, little girl."

"Then why do you want to kill her?" Seth asked, sat up and flinched at the way it pulled the muscles in his back.

Kate smiled at him sadly. "I was an innocent, little girl once too, and look what she did to me."

The Prince Lord, Pilzintecuhtli, comes to them in the form of Carlos, as if it's some kind of joke.

The dog starts barking like mad.

"Carlito!" Seth calls, waving his arms out at his sides dramatically. "How's it going, _efe_?"

"Shut up, Seth," the fake Carlos says, teeth unnaturally white in the now setting sun of the underworld, orange and red making way for dark pallets of black and blue, like a festering bruise.

" _Mi amour_ ," Santanico says, her eyes having gone wide. "What are you..."

"It's a trick," Richie says, trying to push Santanico behind him. "That isn't Carlos."

"You Geckos," the fake Carlos grins. "Always taking what isn't yours."

The God lunges for Richie who pushes him off. Seth steps forwards and punches the fake Carlos in his big, idiot face. Richie comes back up and tries to stab his knife into the fake Carlos' back, but again he shoves Richie into the dirt, turns and punches Seth in the ribs, sends him flying back into the gaggle of onlooking hunters. Before either he or Richie can get up, Santanico is stepping forwards, bringing a hand up to the fake Carlos' neck to touch him tenderly.

"You have never loved me," she says.

"No," the God says. "No one ever has."

He pushes his hand into where her heart is supposed to be, and Richie screams her name.

Seth was mad that his brother chose some stupid vampire bitch over him, but she had given him the peace in death that Seth never could in life, so he kind of understood.

She also gave them a handful of trials to prepare for this, but Seth wonders if Santanico was ever really prepared herself.

In the ensuing chaos of Santanico falling to the ground, dead, the heart she claimed not to have still beating in the fake Carlos' hand, Kate picks up Richie's knife from where he dropped it in the dirt.

" _You_ turned her into a monster," Kate says, stabs the God in the chest right where she always drives a stake home. "You're the ones God can't forgive."

The God's eyes go wide and he fades into dust while Richie holds Santanico's limp body, sobbing.

"What now?" Freddie asks, and Seth realizes that he's talking to him.

Seth shakes his head, bends down to touch Richie's shoulder and his brother looks up at him, baby blue eyes that Seth's known for an eternity. "We finish it," Seth says, and Kate drops to the ground beside them to hug the two brothers to her, letting Richie cry his grief out into her shoulder as Seth looks towards the oncoming night with a cruel absence of stars.

Even though forgiveness is impossible for a God, Seth's starting to think that maybe it's a luxury humans can afford.

He's even saved it a plate of that damn shepherd's pie he and Kate and, somehow, Richie made together, wishes forgiveness would quit milling around the yard already and come inside.

 

 


End file.
